The present invention relates to circuit systems in which a plurality of integrated circuits are interconnected via “daisy chain” communication links, such as single conductor, point-to-point serial communication links.
Daisy chains may be found in circuit systems in which a plurality of integrated circuits are provided in a stacked configuration. For example, a stack of voltage monitors may be provided in an electrical system to measure voltage of a corresponding stack of battery cells of a battery system. Each integrated circuit is to measure a voltage of a corresponding portion of the battery system and report its measurement to a common location, typically a processor or microcontroller. Rather than connect each integrated circuit directly to the processor via a common bus and incur the complexities involved in addressing each integrated circuit separately, it may be advantageous to provide a daisy chain of communication links in which only one integrated circuit is connected to the processor. The remaining integrated circuits each would be connected to its neighbor via a point-to-point communication link. Communication between the integrated circuits and the processor may be conducted in a “bucket brigade” fashion in which a message is conveyed between the processor and a destination integrated circuit via intermediate integrated circuits in the daisy chain.
However, due to errors in the communication paths either the integrated circuit can receive erroneous commands or provide erroneous data to the connected microprocessor. Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide a system for checking the address of each of the integrated circuits to maintain data integrity.
An exemplary implementation of an integrated circuit in a daisy chain network configuration is described in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0180106 (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/011,615, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,859,223, issued Dec. 28, 2010) to Jeremy Gorbold, entitled “BATTERY MONITORING APPARATUS AND DAISY CHAIN INTERFACE SUITABLE FOR USE IN A BATTERY MONITORING APPARATUS.”